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“Please put on your bonnet and come,” gushed Paul, manly mindful of the importance of such things.

“O Frank! We’re just wild to have you.”

“Well, please become sane again, take a seat;—no, not on that box, it’s precious!”

Adele dashed her hat and gloves on the writing-table, utterly regardless of pens, ink, papers or blotters. “Now, my dear, no nonsense,—do say yes.”

“My dear Adele, I do love you very much, but I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

Adele produced a printed list of routes for travellers. “There!” Miss Winchester noticed an illustration of the Sphynx on the cover. “I never made her acquaintance,” said she, and a comical expression played over her features as she tried to divine what Adele expected the Sphynx to tell.

Adele took it up at once. “You never met the Sphynx! Why, that’s just it! Now’s our chance,—don’t you see?” And the Committee started in, one hundred and twenty words to the minute, to explain matters.

Miss Winchester, somewhat confused by the rapidity of Adele’s jumps from place to place in mental travelling, but as responsively elastic as either of the others, took several turns in her office-chair while the others were chatting; but when they landed her among the Himalaya mountains as part of the journey, she gasped for utterance: